Authors, critics and philosophers have time and again claimed that writing makes us better human beings, and the way this is usually thought to be achieved is by tapping into our capacity for empathy. Narrative is particularly geared towards “putting us in someone else’s shoes”, which is an important part of its affective power. What is it that makes us feel for others in stories? How does that affect readers? Will they go to war over a fictional character?
In this seminar, we will systematically look at the way that narrative empathy works by looking into narratological, psychological and cognitive research; but we will also look at the history of empathy and its relation to literature and narrative, all the way from ancient notions of catharsis through the eighteenth-century philosophy of moral sentiments to today’s battles around banning books for children and young adults.
- Dozent/in: Sebastian Domsch